Powershell Memory Usage / Leakage?

Hi,

I am having an issue with a long running powershell script with a the memory increasing over time, like a leak. I am creating collection variables but after doing a connection to sql. Later on I am writing the output to a CSV file. However in my functions I am setting the collection variables to $null. But the memory keeps going up and up.

Is there something special I am missing on how powershell frees it memory. So for example if I call function a and I have a variable called $test should the memory be free for what was allocated to that function.

So is there any general advice somebody can offer how powershell allocates and frees it's memory, or any other advice that you can offer?

Who is Participating?

It is bad style (but commonly used) in PowerShell to collect output into a var in a loop, just to push the results out without further processing. That way PS has to allocate and deallocate small chunks of memory in a bigger, non-continous memory area, which leads to more memory consumption and excessive memory fragmentation.
Local vars (used only in functions or script blocks) are marked for GC whenever their scope is left, of course, but that doesn't mean GC will jump in immediately.

Whenever possible, use the pipeline, and no intermediate objects, to lessen memory impact.

Considering to combine SQL SELECT and the test1 function with external Export-CSV might be better, but that depends on what you do in fact in the function. Hard to tell with the overly simplified code you showed ;-).